Deep Sea News » Dr. Martinihttp://www.deepseanews.com
All the news on the Earth's largest environment.Sat, 01 Aug 2015 03:02:21 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3How currents pushed debris from the missing Malaysian Air flight across the Indian Ocean to Réunionhttp://www.deepseanews.com/2015/07/how-currents-pushed-debris-from-the-missing-malaysian-air-flight-across-the-indian-ocean-to-reunion/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/07/how-currents-pushed-debris-from-the-missing-malaysian-air-flight-across-the-indian-ocean-to-reunion/#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 23:53:04 +0000http://www.deepseanews.com/?p=55247What seems to be debris from the Malaysian Air flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished in March 2014 has washed up on on the island of Réunion in the western Indian Ocean. Investigators from Boeing are still figuring out whether the flaperon (the technical name for the piece of airplane wing) is from the missing plane, but it seems very likely that it is.

Réunion is practically on the the other side of the Indian basin from where investigators think the missing airplane may have gone down. So how did this chunk of airplane get all the way over there? Short answer: it was pushed by currents, winds and waves. From my physical oceanography perspective, I am going to discuss here what scientists and investigators thought the ocean would do to debris from a possible wreck, what the ocean actually did and what happened to the debris along the way.

What we thought the ocean would do.

Numerical models, also known as electronic oceans inside your computer, are used to predict where currents, winds and waves will push marine debris. In this case, a model run by Charitha Pattiaratchi from the University of Western Australia was used to estimate the trajectories of crash debris as they were spread out by ocean currents and to figure out where they will end up. And that giant squiggle of red debris trajectories located just east of Madagascar are positioned right on top of Réunion! Of course, this is just a prediction and the timing is a little off since it’s only been 18 months since the crash. This mismatch probably occurred because the model was likely run with historical surface current data and idealized numerical debris, although I couldn’t find any details on the model itself (if anyone knows please send me a link in the comments!). And even though I think Prof. Pattiaratchi oversells his predictions (if it’s so accurate why hasn’t any debris been found on Australian and Tasmaninan beaches hmmm?), there are enough realizations to show that debris from the crash would have likely ended up on the tiny isolated bump in the big blue sea called Réunion. So in some ways it’s not surprising that the flaperon washed up there and it’s also likely that more debris will too.

What the ocean actually did.

Every news outlet seems to love posting the latest images from earth.nullschool.net to show the currents in the Indian Ocean. Why not? I love that site and the graphics are pretty! But the problem is it only shows a snapshot of the latest 5 days and is not at all indicative of the mean flow that pushed the debris across the Indian Ocean. To do that, we need to look at the average currents since the plane disappeared to get a better grasp on exactly what pushed debris to Réunion.

Average surface currents since the disappearance of MH370. Colors have been Zissoufied and indicate current speed. Arrows show current direction and larger arrows = faster currents.

The most obvious feature in the graphic above are all the arrows pointing westward just south of the equator around 10-15° S. It’s called the South Equatorial Current (we oceanographers are very creative in our naming schemes). Debris from the aircraft got caught up in this flowing water and were likely pushed across the Indian Ocean smack dab onto Réunion.

But it’s a little more unclear in this image how the debris got north from the search area into the South Equatorial Current. The culprit? The West Australian Current that flows northward along Western Australia. You can’t see it too clearly here, because there is a lot of small scale eddies that mess with the averages. But if you look at a even longer term averages, it’s there. The debris probably just took a very squiggley northward path until it reached the South Equatorial Current.

Historical map of the Indian Ocean Gyre [source: wikipedia]

Both the South Equatorial Current and the West Australian current are part of the larger Indian Ocean gyre, a giant rotating vortex of water in the southern Indian Ocean. Some of the debris, if they manage to float that long, may even end up back on the Australian coast because of the gyre!

I should also note that the debris was found about 4400 km away from where the plane might have gone down and it’s been about 505 days since the plane disappeared. Making a rough calculation with my TI-85, that means the drift speed of the debris needs to be about 0.1 m/s or ~5 miles a day to get to Réunion from the search area. That’s pretty close to the current speeds in the plot above so it’s totally plausible that this debris is from the crash.

What happened to the debris as it drifted.

Anything that has been in the ocean for more than a year will have some sort of sea life clinging to it, and this piece of wing is no exception. Look at all those gooseneck barnacles! Resident DSN barnacle expert Miriam Goldstein has informed me that this amount of barnacles could easily grow on the flaperon in the 16 months it has probably been out at sea. I’m actually a little surprised more hasn’t grown on it. She also notes that they are from the Genus Lepas, although she can’t identify the species from the photo. The barnacles don’t seem to preferentially growing on one side, which also leads me think that this piece of debris was mostly submerged while drifting.

WHAT NOW?

The search for answers regarding the plane’s disappearance has been a long and difficult one. More debris from the wreck could end up on Réunion or at least near it in the future, if it has not already. Even though we found pieces of the plane, we can’t pinpoint exactly where the plane went down as suggested by some media outlets. But there might be clues in the debris itself to at least indicate what caused the plane to veer so very far off course and disappear. My hope is if investigators can find more debris, they can figure out what happened to MH370 in the first place and finally give the families of those onboard the tragic flight can find some answers and peace.

If I ever meet Wendy Schmidt in person, it’s probably going to be awkward. I’ll be doing my best to not instantaneously bear hug this woman who has sponsored a series of XPRIZE competitions to save the oceans from ourselves and push innovation in ocean technology forward. First it was an oil cleanup machine. Now it’s ocean health. In this latest ocean challenge, 12 teams were tasked with creating better, faster and cheaper pH sensors to understand ocean acidification. And the winner, Sunburst Sensors was able to achieve all these things.

Ocean acidification, once called global warming’s “equally evil twin“, is a big problem that we still have a lot to learn about. The world’s oceans are becoming more acidic, caused by increased anthropogenic CO2 that the ocean readily absorbs. When the pH drops, it’s not good for all sorts of sea beasties. Beasties shells made from calcium carbonate (pteropods, crustaceans, plankton, mollusks… the list goes on) start to dissolve. Their beastie babies have a hard time growing shells. Corals can’t make hard skeletons. Other beastie’s immune system weakens. And in some beasties their metabolisms sloooooww doooowwwn. Bad news bears all around.

The thing is, even though we know that ocean acidification is bad, we are still have a lot to learn about where it’s happening and how it affects ecosystems. The reason? It’s really f’ing hard to measure pH. The most accurate way to do it is to take a water sample and analyze it in a lab. But that’s hard, expensive, time consuming and you can’t process that many samples. The easier way is to use a pH sensor, but the before today, the technology just wasn’t that accurate. A cash prize contest is the perfect way to give that technology a much needed kick in the ass.

To start, Xprize contacted 25 scientists to find out what they needed/wanted/yearned for in a pH sensor. Turns out it was two things: a really accurate sensor and a really cheap one. The contest winner, Sunburst Sensors did both of these things.

Currently, most commercially available pH sensors are electrode based, estimating pH by measuring the change in the electrical potential of seawater when certain ions are present. The Sunburst team uses an entirely different method. Every hour, their SAMI pH sensor takes a small water sample and mixes it with a special dye whose color is sensitive to pH. Then, to measure the change in color they shot laser beams through the dyed water and VOILA, pH is calculated! And the results were amazingly accurate. In one test they rivaled the numbers gotten from simultaneous lab samples. But seriously, does this mean Sunburst will start using sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads to monitor ocean pH? Totally sounds plausible to me.

Lest you think that I only find sea life creepy, this tank of dangling pH-sensors at MBARI are pretty eerie too.

All the pH sensors were subjected to a battery of tests. First they were tested for accuracy. Then they sat in a seawater test tank at MBARI for 2.5 months. Then exposed to natural ocean conditions (tides, winds, runoff, biofouling) in a custom tank at the Seattle Aquarium. Finally, they were plunged to 3 km depths off the coast of Hawaii. The Wendy Schmidt ocean sensor gauntlet is fierce people.

What is really amazing is the price of the i-SAMI, Sunburst’s low cost sensor. Less than $1000 to manufacture. This is pretty incredible when most sensors typically cost upwards of $10K. More pH sensors for professionals and citizen scientists alike? YES PLEASE.

But this competition is not only about pH sensors, it’s about new ocean technology. In addition to gaining better pH sensors, 10 additional patentable innovations were created by the contest. Innovations like better wireless data transmission. And during the 2.5 month long MBARI tank tests all the teams learned how to better combat seawater corrosion, which can wreak havoc on an ocean sensor.

Finally a big hearty congrats to Sunburst Sensors and all of the other XPRIZE entries! Thanks for creating some really great technology and for helping to make our oceans a healthier place.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: During the testing in Seattle, I had a lovely brunch that included mimosas and donut holes with my friends Chris Kellogg (Judge, Ocean Health XRIZE) and Jyotika Virmani (Director of Technical Operations, Ocean Health XPRIZE). I learned much about the spectacular testing tank.

I know you are just floating there below 300 m with your arms up in the air water like you just don’t care. Some people may call this the cockatoo position, others may accuse you of doing Snooki impersonations. I’ll argue you are just doing your best Mona Lisa. Cool, calm, collected with an undefinable expression. Having a neutrally buoyant body just allows you to be all serenely floaty like that. Your creepy eyes follow everyone around the room no matter where they go. BORING INTO YOUR SOUL AND DISCOVERING ALL YOUR SECRETS. Of course being a glass squid, you have none of your own. Not even about what you ate for lunch yesterday. That’s staring at me too now. Seriously now, STOP IT.

Shoutout to Susan vonThun at MBARI for uploading the video to youtube!

]]>http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/07/this-squid-wont-stop-staring-at-you/feed/2It’s time to geek out over a new global bathymetric data sethttp://www.deepseanews.com/2015/07/its-time-to-geek-out-over-a-new-global-bathymetric-data-set/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/07/its-time-to-geek-out-over-a-new-global-bathymetric-data-set/#commentsThu, 02 Jul 2015 05:57:00 +0000http://www.deepseanews.com/?p=55015

It’s 1903 and Prince Albert I of Monaco is no longer feeling serene. He’s feeling jaunty and gonna map the f**k out of some oceans.

Nothing makes my little heart go pitter-patter like a new data set. And the new General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) does not disappoint. Let’s go geek out over some data, shall we?

What exactly is GEBCO? It’s a giant, high-resolution map of the ocean seafloor (with some topography thrown in to make land feel better about itself). This whole thing was the brain child of His Serene Highness Prince Albert I of Monaco, who in 1903 decided we needed to map the oceans. I was amazed to learn that up until the early 1990’s these maps were still drawn by hand! Then we realized that computers were actually pretty good at mapping too and first digitized maps came out in 1994, in a handy-dandy set of CD-ROM of course.

But now GEBCO’s all digital and ready to be downloaded at the click of a button from the interwebs. It’s been 6 years since the last update and this one is awesome. The fine folks at GEBCO channeled the data curating acumen of a million librarians to create this bathymetric pièce de résistance. New data sets were added (the Coast of Chile is looking mighty fine if I do say so). Metadata was added (the data that explains the data. Did you use a fancy acoustic system or a rock tied to a rope to get that depth?). They even got classified data from the U.S…..SHHHHH.

BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF BATHYMETRY.

And then they did lots of basic statistics. ‘Cause you had better flaunt those stats when you got ’em. The mean depth of the ocean? It’s 3897 m (2.4 miles). Where is 50% of the earth’s surface? Below 3200 m (2 miles). What’s the percentage of the earth covered by water? 71%. But my favorite statistic has to be this one:

~900 ship-years of surveying would be needed to obtain complete multibeam coverage of the world’s oceans.

YES PEOPLE. 900 years. In an ultimate show of carthographic geekery *SWOON*, they even figured out it would take 300 years to map the deep ocean and another 600 to map the shallow water near the coast. But that’s actually not that bad considering there are over 700 high-resolution multibeam mapping systems out there ready to be deployed at any moment. We’ll probably get there sooner than 2915. Although they’ll probably need more than 2 CD-ROMS after mowing the ocean seafloor for all the data….

It’s time people. Time to upgrade that bathymetry. And you can find it all at http://www.gebco.net/ I know that’s what I’m doing this evening.

It’s Friday and who doesn’t need a little more Walrus in their lives? I certainly do. Streaming live 24-7 from Round Island, Alaska (in the aptly named Walrus Islands) is the Walrus Cam. You can watch the walrus in the waves. Walrus laying on the beach. The ungainliness as the they attempt to transfer between these two states. ALL WALRUS. ALL THE TIME.

The remote Round Island is a walrus favorite. They come back year after year to haul-out on the beach. Up to 14,000 walruses have been counted on the island on a single day! So enjoy the soothing sounds and visions of walrus, waves, and waddling.

]]>http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/05/all-walrus-all-the-time/feed/0The awkward state of penguin moltinghttp://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/the-awkward-state-of-penguin-molting/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/the-awkward-state-of-penguin-molting/#commentsSat, 25 Apr 2015 10:23:53 +0000http://deepseanews.com/?p=54708This oddly plumaged penguin appeared in my Antarctic & Arctic Data Consortium 2015 calendar (yes, I have a data calendar) and I needed to know…why on earth does this penguin have a fauxhawk?

And of course there is no better day to answer this question than on World Penguin Day! Before this, I used to think there were two states of penguin life.

STAGE 1: THE FUZZY BALL OF SQUEE

Give me all the hugs. [image courtesy of shutterstock]

AND STAGE 2: THE HYDRODYNAMIC SARDINE HUNTER

NO ONE is more majestic and has more pungent fish breath than I. [image courtesy of shutterstock]

But what I did not realize, is there is a state of penguin existence that occurs between the two. The state between fluffy baby feathers and sleek, waterproof, adult feathers. This state is called molting, and can only be described as downright awkward.

I killed the last guy that called me a turkey. [image courtesy of shutterstock]

During penguin molting, every single baby feather on their body is replaced with a new adult one. This process is often called a “catastrophic molt” because all the feathers are replaced at once. And that scruffy look, it’s because the old feather won’t fall out until the new one has completely grown in. But what really got me, besides the awkwardness, is the unique patterns of feather loss. Molting, it’s a catastrophe on so many levels.

SOME ROCK THE TRAVOLTA…

…OR IF YOU PREFER, THE REVERSE TRAVOLTA.

SOME DAYS YOU JUST CAN’T GO ON MOLTING.

[https://flic.kr/p/a51ZjK]

THEN THERE ARE THE MOLTS OF WRATH.

[https://flic.kr/p/79CFmd]

AND OTHERS JUST EMBRACE THE MOLT. #TTT [THUNDERDOME THROWBACK THURSDAYS].

Luckily for us humans, we only have to endure teenage awkwardness but once in our lives (but the memories are forever). Penguins on the other hand are DOOMED to repeat this atrocity each and every year. The process usually takes about 2 weeks and during this time the penguins are fasting, forced to stay on land and unable to feed because during the molt they are no longer waterproof. But don’t worry too much, penguins gorge themselves beforehand and they have plenty of fat to live off of during molting (no penguin sweaters needed). So in honor of this intense physical and mental penguin process, I unofficially dedicate this World Penguin day to the molters, because everyone deserves to grow out of their awkward phase.

This octopus will crawl at you in ANY DIRECTION [image courtesy of shutterstock]

Let’s face it, octopuses are just going to be our cephalopod overlords. They have 8 arms, 3 hearts, Moms eat their own babies so the others can survive and they put Houdini to shame with their escape artistry. And now let’s just add to the list that they are way better at crawling than we will ever be.

If we landlubbers want to make a turn, we nearly always need to turn our 2 clumsy feet in the direction we want to go by rotating our entire body (unless we are determined to an an awkward crab side-scuttle). Not so for the octopus. Using the beautiful radial symmetry of their 8 armed body, they can crawl along just as gracefully in any direction without having to turn their bodies. In other words, the direction their arms propel them in is completely independent of the orientation of their head and body. Check out the crawling action below, the blue arrow is the direction of motion while the green arrow is the orientation of the octopus body. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE GROUND OCTOPUS.

Octopus crawling is actually pretty simple, they just shorten and lengthen their arms to move forward, getting grip with those awesome suckers. This is similar to the how some mollusks move, octopi just have way more arms to coordinate. And unlike most animals, their gait isn’t a well-coordinated affair with a distinct rhythm like human walking or horse trotting, it’s just kind of random. Although they do preferentially use their back 4 tentacles to move and have favorite tentacle pairs they use together. Grade school must be a nightmare when trying to figure out what tentacle to put that pencil in. #3 right-tentacled? Ambi-tentacled?

Even though we know that octopus locomotion is amazeballs, we still don’t completely understand how they coordinate all 8 of those arms and don’t end up in tangly knot (Immediately upon posting this I got a schooling via text from fellow deepling Alex Warneke: Octopi uses chemical signals so they don’t get tied up in knots. Their suckers recognize the “scent” of their own skin and will not stick to it :)”). And while they can crawl independent of their body position, octopi often don’t. Instead they face at a 45 degree angle to their motion. Why? So their eye faces forward! Because an octopus walking into a wall would look pretty stupid.

]]>http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/which-way-does-an-octopus-crawl-anyway-it-wants/feed/0The obnoxiously loud sounds of glaciers meltinghttp://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/the-obnoxiously-loud-sounds-of-glaciers-melting/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/the-obnoxiously-loud-sounds-of-glaciers-melting/#commentsTue, 07 Apr 2015 18:56:34 +0000http://deepseanews.com/?p=54423No matter where you go in the ocean, there will always be noise. Rain, waves, wind, ice, whales, boats, kraken screams, etc. All these processes have specific noises associated with them, creating an ever present background rumbling in the ocean. But it’s the constant snap, crackle and pop of melting glaciers that turns fjords from the sound equivalent of your local library into happy hour at the bar on Friday night.

Glaciers, turning ambient noise up to 11.

It’s not news that glaciers are melting, nor is it news that sea ice makes noise. But what is new is that their melting causes some of the loudest ambient noise in the ocean. As glaciers melt, they release little air bubbles that have been trapped in their icy matrix for Millenia. It’s the separation of these little air bubbles that is creating all that damn ocean racket. As the bubble pinches itself off from the ice, it makes a tiny little pop. The sound of one little bubble being pinched is kind of adorable actually.

Larger bubbles sound like the happy knock on your door when your neighbor realizes you are having an impromptu dance party to their favorite song and can’t wait to join in.

Magnify this by the surface area of a glacier slowly sliding into the sea and melting. Millions upon millions of bubbles being continuously released. The sound….well it’s almost deafening. Puts the satisfying snaps of Jiffy Pop to shame.

One of my favorite parts of this experiment is how the sound of a 1000 pinched bubbles was associated with all this noise. The researchers hiked to Gulkana Glacier in Alaska, cut off a chunk of glacier ice, brought it back to the lab, and listened to it while it was melting. Then, they compared the sound signature of the escaping lab bubble to the ambient noise in the fjord and found they matched! I’ll never look at my ice cube melting in my Gin and Tonic the same way again.

In the wild, it’s not that easy to listen to glacier ice. Glaciers that terminate in sea water are notoriously hard to approach. Especially when large chunks of ice are constantly falling off them, potentially falling on your instruments, your boat, or even yourself. To listen to a glacier you have to deploy a special underwater listening decide called the hydrophone, which is just a microphone that works really well in water. FYI dropping your phone into the sea does not make it a hydrophone, it makes it a brick.

The hydrophone was deployed close enough to listen but far enough away so that it wouldn’t be maimed by glacier ice. After a year of listening and comparing data from three different glaciers, they found that ambient noise levels were higher in warmer fjords. More melting = more bubbles = more noise. Although in this study noisiness wasn’t well matched with ocean tides, winds, or even air temperatures. The relationship between the atmosphere and glacier melting? It’s complicated. But in any case, listening to glaciers is a viable and relatively easy way to figure out when glaciers melt a little or a lot.

But I should be clear here, while ambient noise in fjords in increasing because of glacial melting, this is by NO MEANS the loudest sounds in the ocean. If you want to hear obnoxiously loud noises, go to places where glaciers are calving. Ice quakes are responsible for the bloop, which I am still convinced was initially caused by the kraken needing some ice for a cocktail. For intolerable and deafening levels of noise, go find yourself a seismic airgun survey or a navy sonar. Unless you are a cetacean, then that is a terrible idea.

]]>http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/04/the-obnoxiously-loud-sounds-of-glaciers-melting/feed/0Outward bound and off to new adventureshttp://www.deepseanews.com/2015/03/outward-bound-and-off-to-new-adventures/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/03/outward-bound-and-off-to-new-adventures/#commentsSun, 15 Mar 2015 07:08:44 +0000http://deepseanews.com/?p=54381

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

While we may be scattered across the country (or at this point across the world), the Deep Sea News crew has got each other’s backs. That’s why I am particularly sad to say goodbye to two members of the team, Al and Rick. I’m in awe of how Al and Rick aren’t afraid to speak their minds, tackle difficult topics and champion issues they care about. I’m losing a chunk of my internet strike force! In their offline lives, they both work to make real solutions for the ocean. And doing it all with a style and a cocktail. I wish them good luck on their upcoming adventures as they continue to make the ocean a better place for not only the things in it, but the communities around it.

]]>http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/03/outward-bound-and-off-to-new-adventures/feed/0Are the ocean and atmosphere finally cooperating and is El Niño really here? Probably.http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/03/are-the-ocean-and-atmosphere-finally-cooperating-and-is-el-nino-really-here-probably/
http://www.deepseanews.com/2015/03/are-the-ocean-and-atmosphere-finally-cooperating-and-is-el-nino-really-here-probably/#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 14:34:26 +0000http://deepseanews.com/?p=54236El Niño has been playing with my heart for a whole year now*. It’s coming. It’s not coming. It’s gonna be huge. It’s not coming now. The ocean looks like en EL Niño but the atmosphere doesn’t. Y U SO FICKLE THE CHILD? I cut my loses, ran from this atmospheric/ocean phenomena prediction and healed my bruised science heart. Until this morning…

As this lovely map of anomalous sea surface temperatures show, the Pacific is running a little warm. And it’s not just yesterday that it’s been balmy, it’s been this way for the past 4 weeks. Predictions are looking pretty good too, and this forecast might stick. CAUSE IF IT DOESN’T MY HEART AND THE EASTERN PACIFIC WILL BECOME A COLD, COLD PLACE EL NIÑO.

My tortured emotions aside, it looks like the recent warming is the result of another, albeit successful, equatorial Kelvin wave that caused downwelling across the equator and letting that warming the waters off South America. And you I would be remiss if I didn’t include that the atmosphere decided to cooperate too. Thanks for being a team player wind anomalies!

Finally, an equatorial Kelvin wave than gets the job of El Niño-triggering done. Watch as it goes from West to East, depressing the thermocline and causing water to warm.

But there’s a bit of bad news for California. This wimpy El Niño probably won’t trigger more rain and some relief from the drought they’ve been having. Although I dare say the climate predictions, which do factor in contributions from ENSO along with lots of other variables, are looking pretty for the northwest and hell, even the east coast! Anyway, we’ll see how this all develops and let’s hope that El Niño won’t break my heart again.

* I’m totally griping about the recent spate of predictions, but I know predicting the fate of El Niño is really a very difficult job. It’s a complex set of interactions between the ocean and atmosphere that we are still learning about. In short, hat’s off to all the scientists trying to figure it out and inform the world about it.